We examined the effect of speaking more than one language
(multilingualism) or two dialects of the same language (bi-
dialectalism) on executive control (EC) by administering seven
EC tasks to 46 multilingual, 72 bi-dialectal and 47 monolingual
young adults. We used the EC model of Miyake, Friedman,
Emerson, Witzki, Howerter and Wager (2000) according to
which EC comprises three components: working memory,
task-switching and inhibition. We also tested two theoretical
views regarding the locus of the bilingual advantage: first, that
bilingualism affects specific EC components and, second, that
bilingualism has a more general effect on the whole EC
network. Miyake et al.’s (2000) model was a good fit to our EC
data. We also found that both multilinguals and bi-dialectals
had significantly higher EC scores than monolinguals.
Moreover, both the multilingual and the bi-dialectal advantage
was found in overall EC ability and could not be attributed to
a specific EC component.